The California Public Utilities Commission is running a bit short on cash, so it has blessed the creation of a foundation to solicit money from the very companies it is supposed to be keeping an eye on.

The idea behind the CPUC Foundation is to have a pool of money to reward deserving staffers, host foreign guests and generally brush up the commission's image - in other words, to pay for activities not covered by agency coffers.

Organizers plan to kick off the fundraising with a big dinner Thursday night coinciding with the commission's 100th anniversary.

"Basically, every utility will be contributing - so if it's a conspiracy, it's a massive conspiracy," said former PUC Commissioner Bill Bagley, one of a half-dozen agency alums named to a committee setting up the foundation.

Even Gov. Jerry Brownis expected to speak at the dinner. Guests also include commission staffers and reps from consumer, labor and environmental organizations.

"But I'm not seeking the money or promoting anything," said Peevey, insisting that all the fundraising is being done by outside boosters.

The dinner is being organized by former commission Executive Director Steve Larson, now with the Sacramento powerhouse lobbying firm California Strategies - where he specializes in energy and utility policy.

According to the foundation's filings, it's being set up in part to "educate the public ... and to ensure that the public is well-informed about the actions the commission and its staff take."

"It doesn't look right," Mark Toney, executive director of the consumer watchdog group The Utility Reform Network, first told us a couple of weeks back.

Nonetheless, with news Tuesday that the governorhad just appointed TURN's longtime attorney Mike Florioand a second consumer advocate, Catherine Sandoval, to the commission, Toney said he had decided to attend after all.

"We believe the commission is going to be very different," Toney said.

However, state Sen. Mark Leno, D-San Francisco, who chaired a legislative hearing last year on the San Bruno pipeline blast - and who plans to introduce legislation to tighten the commission's oversight practices of PG&E - called the dinner "rather unseemly."

We kid you not: After a three-week trial - at a cost we can only imagine - a San Francisco jury has determined that a 47-year-old Cotati man was not, in fact, masturbating when he was moving his hands inside his pants as he stood on a Tenderloin corner looking at a 10-year-old girl.

Jurors instead decided that the accused - who has no history of crimes against children - had been trying to retrieve his heroin, which had fallen down his pants. Since he wasn't facing drug charges, the defendant walked.

D.C. dish: The Bay Area's two new mayors are back from Washington, where they each made quite an impression in their own way.

San Francisco's quiet Ed Lee had the benefit of insiders' help - P.J. Johnston, an ex-press aide to former Mayor Willie Brown who often accompanied his boss to D.C., showed Lee the ropes on Capitol Hill. And former Secretary of State George Shultz and wife Charlotte Shultz were his escorts at a White House state dinner.

Oakland's more brash Jean Quanwas as amped up as ever. We're told she made it clear that she had been elected to a full term, while her friend from across the bay was "a placeholder" mayor.

Lee held his tongue for most of the trip. However, after Quan gave a particularly lengthy dissertation to one group about how she had come from behind and beaten Oakland's political establishment, without once mentioning ranked-choice voting, Lee couldn't help himself.

"You know what the difference between me and Mayor Quan is?" Lee asked the crowd.